Monkey First Birthday Cake

Hellooooo? Sorry I've been away for a while, but I hope some of you are still sticking around :) It's been quiet here on the blog for the last couple of weeks, but I at least have a couple of things to show for the time I've spent away. Last time I wrote on here, we were getting ready for Thanksgiving. Joe and I went to St. Louis to spend Thanksgiving with Joe's family and we had a great time! His grandparents drove in from Wisconsin and it was nice to hang out with all of them for a few days. We even hit up a few black Friday deals for some Christmas gifts. We had to come home on Saturday morning after Thanksgiving so I could finish up this cake for my friend's son's first birthday which was planned for Sunday. I made the jungle baby shower cake for this same friend last fall so I was more than happy to make the first birthday cake too! We get to see the baby, Aiden, pretty often and he and Joe are buddies.

I started the cake process before Thanksgiving. The cakes and fondant could be made ahead of time, and I froze the cakes, so that saved me a lot of time on Saturday. The top tier is banana cake with cream cheese icing and white chocolate ganache under the fondant. The bottom tier is chocolate cake, icing, and ganache under the chocolate fondant. I also made a little banana cupcake with chocolate icing for the birthday boy, but he was not interested in eating it haha!

I had a few little bumps along the way of making this cake, and just about swore that I'd never make another cake again! The fondant was just giving me an unbelievable amount of trouble. I worked up until the last second to get it finished before we had to leave for the party. In the end it turned out fine and everyone seemed to love it. The leftovers even showed up at work the next day since my friend with the baby also happens to be a coworker! Here are a couple more pictures of the cake.

After the relaxing holiday and the stressful cake weekend, I had to leave first thing Monday morning for Corning, NY for a work trip. The area we were in is just south of the Finger Lakes and it was very pretty. Unfortunately I either got food poisoning or a 24 hour stomach flu the night my coworker and I arrived because I was pretty much out of commission all day Tuesday. On top of that, my coworker had a sinus infection going on, his bag got lost by the airline on the way to New York, and then we had to get up at 4:00 AM on Wednesday to catch our 6:00 AM flight! Needless to say, it was not exactly an enjoyable trip.

After one more night of recovering from my stomach problems on Wednesday, I had to gear back up for another big cake project! I'd previously agreed to make a big cake for our work Christmas party that was last night. I spent Thursday night, Friday night and ALL day yesterday working on this cake (which I'll save for another post). Aaaaaaand that's why I haven't blogged in 2 weeks :)

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too and that you've had a slightly more relaxing time since then as well. Although with Christmas right around the corner, you've probably only been getting busier. I'll post soon about the cake I made for work, and I'm also still planning on putting up the recipe that you could use your leftover turkey for, even though I know it's a little late. Oh well, maybe you froze some...

Have a great week!